If There's Something To Not Bother Remembering

it's how Mort Sahl spelled his last name.    The man who peaked even before Simps peaked in jr. high was already losing work in 1965 because his work was dated.   

There was nothing important about his routines.  But Sahl believed,  I mean he really said that they closed semi-legendary Hungry I because the Johnson administration was afraid of his alleged humor.   I mean, he really did believe that some government conspiracy closed the nightclub because of his shtick.  What happened is the owner didn't keep up with his taxes and was a crappy business manager who sold the name to a conglomerate of strip clubs which is why for most of its existence "The Hungry I" was a sleazy strip joint.   Talk about someone entirely more impressed with his importance than literally everyone else in the world.  Not an unusual delusion among those in the lower mid-range of show biz.   

After his shtick as a "liberal comedian" faded,   Mort turned ever farther right,  supporting the power-hungry general Al Haig for president, among other things, and ever more lived in the heat-death of his ever more dimly remembered career as the youngish man who came on the stand-up stage with a newspaper under his arm commenting on the current news.  His geezerly, now very elderly admirers believed he invented that format when Will Rogers did it better in the 1920s - and even Will Rogers didn't invent the idea.   

If there's something that's not worth remembering it's a comedy routine that aged as quickly as the daily newspaper of a week ago - and that week was during the Eisenhower administration - and how its owner's name was spelled.

Simps and I have gone over this before, comedy has to always be new or it gets old and once it's old it isn't funny anymore.   Which is why owning and memorizing bits of  a copy of a comedy routine that is older than the age of retirement isn't some kind of intellectual virtue.  It' like someone who does a canny  imitation of the sound of a fart who might make you chuckle with embarrassment if he does it once but after twice it's only him being an asshole kid.   Simps likes canned comedy routines,  I once compared recording them to canning scrambled eggs.   Once those of us old enough to sort of recall hearing Mort on a variety show in the 60s, when younger comedians who were willing to change with the times overtook him are dead, no one in the world is going to care about Mort Sahl except as the museum specimen he is now and was after about 1965.   Shelley Berman was funnier and a far better performer.   And his stuff is dated, too.